


The Final Desperate Cure

by Thepresidentofrussia23



Category: Law & Order: SVU, Maniac (TV 2018)
Genre: A-B-C sequence, Abortion, Aftermath of Torture, Alcohol, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcohol Withdrawal, Alternate Universe, Coma, Computers, Dreamworld, Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Drug Withdrawal, Drug-Induced Sex, Drugged Sex, Drugs, Electricity, Electroconvulsive Therapy, Forced Incest, G.R.T.A - Freeform, Gertie - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Medical Procedures, Medical Torture, Medical Trauma, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Consensual Electroconvulsive Therapy, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Psychological Torture, Torture, alcoholic Peter Stone, mirrorworld, radiation exposure, read the tags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:42:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22372003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thepresidentofrussia23/pseuds/Thepresidentofrussia23
Summary: Peter Stone is drowning in the loss of his sister Pam, that trauma compounds alongside the fact that he is a depressed and alcoholic man who tries finding his answers at the bottom of the bottle until a miracle cure from Neberdine that sounds too good to be true is being tested....his story will soon converge with the man that he last expected to meet...Nick Amaro Is it worth the risk on their lives and is it all they have expected from the drug trial?
Relationships: Nick Amaro/Peter Stone (L&O: SVU)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 1





	1. Faded Truths and Soulless Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [4QuietRyt3r](https://archiveofourown.org/users/4QuietRyt3r/gifts).



Anything is better than facing the demons that tear at the souls inside of us, anything is better than letting me be reminded of how much I am a failiure of an older brother to protect my younger sister Pamela Stone, anything is better than facing the fact that I failed to save her from my monsters and from her monsters, I failed a duty and she paid her life dearly that day, bleeding out on the concrete ground, bleeding out and choking on her own blood and filth, terrified and alone. I feel this pain in me even now, hearing my name being called out...  
"PETER!!!"  
My name being called out, as though it were a lifeline, a plea for help, felt like a stab to the heart, just a split second before the gunshots rang out and ended her life forever. There was nothing I could do to save her and it still kills me to this very day that she saw me and that she somehow forgot that she should have remained calm and silent so that we could have negotiated for her release. But there is not much I can do, but reflect, and hindsight is 20/20 and it is a demon that eats away at my very soul and my very soul and my very essence. There are no answers to the pain within, or the agony inside and when will it stop or when will it end, however, one can try and make an effort by drinking and drinking is what I did and I drank like a fucker, I drank like a goddamn bastard who wanted to murder my liver and my kidneys and do it in a dramatic fashion and I wanted to do it as soon as possible, to make myself feel the pain that my sister felt as she died on that filthy ground and god, I regret it all, all that I have done to make her suffer and to make my father suffer this way, I am such a humiliation to the Stone family.  
I do my paperwork and turn it in for the day and then punch out and go to the bar and buy my usual round of drinks at Uncle Sam's Saloon bar where the sports channels are on and I can see the Mets are on, it is a constant reminder of the glory days of when I was younger and much more healthier before I shredded my ACL and my TCL and discloacted my kneecap in one go, my dad always joked that I always did things all the way...even injuries, and he was very worried that they would have to amputate, and he had no medical knowledge himself, which was why he became a Judge and married Richard Brooks and announced his canidacy for becoming a judge and took the exams for becoming a judge and then having to be hand picked from the top fifteen percent of the 1500 ADAs that took the exam and then he was given an interview and then placed on the ballot and elected by the people of Illinois.   
Every breath I take is like inhaling water, it is a struggle to try and survive in the first place at all, ever since I was sexually assaulted by my boss in Chicago and decided to not report out out of fear becuase of fear and the trauma of that day weigh heavily on me ever since then since I never spoke about it to anybody, I fled to New York for a fresh start so that I wouldn't have to be reminded of my past all the time and yet it chases me like a ghost that is meanderng around in my life, every shadow has a ghost in it that has a ghost that is eating at my soul, that is eating, eating away at me. I will forever be haunted by the monsters that I fear to battle becuase I am a coward and a monster and a murderer. You are the maniac they say, to be the maniac, the one to change the world and to make a difference and to make your mark, funny thing is, all I seem to be doing is being covered in my own sister's blood and disappoint my dad.   
I am the true maniac and nobody can convince me otherwise! My mind cannot be changed, this is the truth indeed, I dream of these truths that others can see that I can only see for myself for now, nobody believes me because I am so delusional, according to some, I am borderline schizophrenia because I am lying to them that I have heard no voices in the past six months. They know it and I know it. I am a liar and my lies are soon coming to an end, but soon I have things to do and I don't have much more time on inverse self reflection and here I go.   
I leave the building and I can feel the gritty dust swirl around me, mix with the snow from late December as I tromp across the sidewalks and wait for the light to signal "Walk" so I can cross the street and I grip my lawbooks and my paperwork and the signal finally changes and I enter the tunnel down to the subway and I go to the turnstile and I swipe my card, only to realize that I'm out of money from me gambling away with the furries at the Pink Palace Casino and then I press the button that summons an AdBuddy. Don't know what's an AdBuddy? Let me explain to you my dear friend, in a sense that it is a literal person reading ads to you wherever you go, and they pay for the services in exchange, in other words, the more ads they get to read to you, the more money they get to pay to you. The person is talking about the services of being a family husband exchange service and it sounds cool, to find love and to help a widow find strength and closure and so on, another company by the name of Neberdine Biotech Incorporated is another one I'm interested in because they pay people to come to them to test medication. I've heard so many things about them. As I get home to my cramped apartment in Manhattan, I find a package from Neberdine, filled with brochures and VHS tapes and CD's and a phone call comes through, I pick up and its a rep from Neberdine...strange, I was just thinking of them just before I came home...hm.  
"Hello who is this?"  
"Is this Peter Stone?"  
"Speaking."  
"This is Neberdine Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Research inc. Speaking, We are here to speak to you   
becuase you have been chosen as a "Hero" Candidate"  
"Well...what DOES a hero candidate do?"  
"Well we have them do experiments that others normally do not do and we treat all sorts of problems, including prostate problems"  
"Popcorn problems?"  
"Yes popcorn problems."  
"Thank you...I'll consider it."


	2. I can hear you whine, I can hear you scream

There are two extremes to any sort of a spectrum, an extreme positive, an extreme negative. You can safely guess based off of my horrendous background in the Bronx, that I wasn't given the right examples or the right tools on how to become an adult and I was tossed into the real world, that I was an extreme negative expected to become a adult, manage relationship after relationship, fighting against my sexuality, knowing that it was against my religion to be bisexual, I battled against myself in middle school dancing in the dance with girls and kissing girls, but I saw a cute boy, who had blond hair, who had beach swept waves and green eyes and I was so tempted to kiss him so badly many times over when I saw him while playing Pop Warner football on the field as a Strong Safety and god damit, the struggle I had to fight against myself and not to mention the ass wipe of a dad I had for a central figure to be my teacher for what should consist as a normal functioning healthy human being and as a father and as a husband. Good god, nobody should listen to Nicholas Amaro Sr. He is the literal example of "Do as I say, not as I do."  
He traumatized me and stole my innocence from me at an age from me when no father should steal their child's virginity from them, he stole mine from me after showing up drunk, at ten o clock, I was in my room, minding my own business, sleeping for the next day, trying to sleep as my parents argued and fought when my mother slapped my father and then grabbed the stick that propped the window to the fire escape shut and beat her face up, I could hear her as I hid in the closet in sheer terror, praying that dad wouldn't find me, and yet he did, he swung my bedroom door open with a loud bang that left a dent on the side wall and came in, screaming and cursing in Spanish so loudly that I could feel the walls rattling so much, I could feel the heart banging against my sternum loudly as he pulled me from my closet and dragged me out, screaming and screaming and ripped off my pants, forced into me and destroyed my innocence, inch by inch as I could hear my mom scream in the background and beg for my dad to stop helplessly, and its all in vain, its all in vain as she can't do much as it hurts and hurts and hurts. She finally three weeks later hung herself in her room and dad was very drunk, very drunk, he was so drunk that he took it out on me, and I was so nauseated that day too, I was puking and puking and puking and puking so much and my cramps as well as the bleeding was so bad that were getting really bad that I decided that I needed to lie in the tub and relax a little using a trick that my mom had taught me, by pouring hot water in a bottle and strapping it to my waist and easing my cramps, only for the cramps to worsen and the maxi pads were filling with blood like crazy and I was terrified beyond my years to understand what was going on and my fever was starting to get worse as the night went on and the dizzier I went, so I stole some money from dad and grabbed the rest of the money stashed from mom's tin and ran to the clinic who told me in a dead pan tone  
"You had a partial miscarriage, you need a abortion immediatly or else you will go into sepisis"  
And so I was booed and screamed at, protested at, thrown rocks at, waited in a line to get a fucking abortion at the age of thirteen! I swear on my badge that if I could, I would never have aborted my kid if there was a chance of saving my baby, I would have accepted the prenatal care and have raised my baby to be a better human being than the father that raped me, I swear on the stars that witness the oath tonight I swear! But that day, It was so sad, I closed my eyes and cried through the whole procedure as they did it. But soon it was over and finally I was able to recover and I confided in my teacher, who contacted social services, who contacted police, who arrested my father for raping me. Now I was put in foster home after foster home, bouncing in different homes until I was eighteen, my chances of graduating from high school were very low, and yet I managed to do so, my chances of making it into a University, even lower, and I still did it. I went into the University of Miami, fell in love with different women, tried and tried again to lie to myself over the fact that I was over the trauma and I was over the rape and that I was ready to move on, but I still wasn't, I became very hyper sexual, to try and numb the sadness and to fill the hole inside that I couldn't fill, I could never fill that hole even as I concived Gilberto, dear God, I feel like a common whore...like a slut...like a disgusting piece of shit...I study and study criminology to try and understand what drives nutcases like my father, but I'm no closer to understanding them even as I gain knowledge, which drives me to a sense of helplessness, a sense of hopelessness and soon, my life will converge with a Attorney that I will meet, much much later after I graduate, post Miami.


	3. The Tears of Blood Streak Down My Face

I know that in Miami, from bad, goes to worse, and that is the influence of drugs because of the flow of cocane from Colombia thanks to Pablo Escobar, I watched many people, especially runners, die in the streets because of sicarios and fellow dealers get gunned down because the gringos were greedy for drugs and they were ready to throw away their lives, their wealth, their happiness, their properties, their spouses, their children, all of it for a temporary high, a temporary blissful relief from whatever was ailing them in this world. That need created a demand, which created a supply and that supply was fulfilled by drug lords like Pablo.   
Sadly, I became one of the Miami cops who were sent undercover and we...we had to try and bust the dealers and they quickly became smart and they quickly made us take the drugs we were going to deal, but, before I was to try and even try and to snort the coke, a rival thug came up, shouting in Portuguese, demanding payment and waving his gun in the large bright night club. The club was filled with people dancing and the music was pounding and everyone was having so much fun, there was so much glitz and glamor in the air as I chugged my drinks and I watched in horror as the man yelled and threated in Catalan and pulled out his revolver and fired his revolver three times into the dealer, I managed to grab my revolver, fire at him, three times, killing him, all of this was happening while bullets shattered glass wallets and dividers and tumblers and spraying blood, tearing organs, tissues and shredding ligaments and stealing lives from them forever. I couldn't stop screaming as someone put a shock blanket around me, as I cursed in Spanish, as the IAB determined me unfit for duty and forced me into counseling and that's what I did, counseling, for a good long two years for shooting that man dead, and it affected my relationship to the point that I broke up with my girlfriend and I eventually decided to move to New York for a fresh start with a clean bill of health...again...It felt like relocating was my solution to solving my problems and that was not a good idea and even my therapist warned me as I packed my things and left "Little Havana" and moved back to the Bronx, back to where it all started, all the nightmares, all the pain, all the suffering and all the horrors and all the hate came rushing back in my mind, and I inhaled sharply and realized  
"Here we go again."  
I joined the NYPD and was able to rise through the ranks quite rapidly despite the blemished past in Miami and IAB hating on me, I was even able to be promoted to the elite squad of the SVU, the Special Victims Unit. My god, the cases, they don't get easier, they hit harder and harder and the only reason I stay is because Olivia told me   
"You do whatever it takes to make sure that they never see the light of day again."  
Those are the words of someone who has been there, who has had her innocence ripped away from her far too soon and I knew and I wished she didn't have the knowledge of such horrors and gone through such hellfire in the first place that made her such an amazing human being, she was so sweet and kind and generous to the victims and would be there to them all and to make sure that they had what they needed and I have to say, I would give the world to her because of what she does for others. Neberdine began to harass me with phone calls and packages after the trial after my undercover job when I slept with the boss's sister, to get information for a trafficking ring, the morons didn't realize that the asswipe roofied me and raped me in her bedroom and then abandoned me in my own room afterwards and then joked about it afterwards because I could hear her laughing. I never told or spoke about this on the trial on the stand despite being under pressure from McCoy and Cassidy because of the horror and the shame and the flashbacks from the past that all could come back as well and bite me in the ass and I did not want that so I kept quiet and answered the rest of the questions as truthfully as I could and tried to not lie and then I finally accepted the offer from Neberdine.   
Neberdine is this huge concrete tall, skyscraper in the middle of Queens, and it has a big ass rainbow painted on the middle and the side of the building, as well as Japanese characters. I enter the building which is drab and gray and white and tan and brown and some narrow stripes of the rainbow are used to lead to different places of the building, I can hear the intercom calling out different names for different trials and different phases, and I see Peter Stone is soon called up for the U.L.P phase III drug trial. This is it, we both know that if we are rejected it, our prospects of being cured and being normalized are gone and down the trash can for good, and that is not an exaggeration.


	4. Sanity is an illusion, we are the living dead

I looked up at the cloudy sky above me, I could see the blue sky above and the white clouds that dotted the sky, I felt my gut twist and roil with an anxiety that I hadn't felt since I had begun the exit Bar exams that would determine my fate as to whether or not I would become a ADA in Chicago, Illinois or not and their law requirements are very much different than that of the New York state law Bar exams, I took in one deep breath after another, hoping to tamp down on the anxiety that was threatening to try and swamp and drown me in a billion, million dark thoughts of my own that I know that nobody but me can save me from. Only I can save myself and I am a total failure at doing that at times and now I realize that Neberdine can save me now from myself, Pam was doomed to die from the very start, its a start for me to begin and try and begin the process of curing and finding sanity and healing. There is no journey in life that I have begun that has ever ended easily and I know that being cured means being forced to confront demons that I have shoved down the closet for a long, long time since I left the Mets.   
I enter the main lobby, which is drab and plain colored with grays, greens, whites and blacks as well as narrow stripes of the rainbow leading up to places in Japanese lettering (I don't know how to read Japanese, I have no Japanese origins of any sort, I was simply able to recognize the script stylizing because I have interacted with Japanese players in the MLB). I walked over to the main countertop after waiting in a line for thirty minutes for people to finish their paperwork and the woman hands me a stack of paperwork, the first thing this does is ring a bunch of legal alarm bells in my mind, a bunch of the terms in the contracts can be easy and quick to get into like time shares and impossible to get out of, not unless you knew someone who was rich and wealthy, I was given repeated assurances that Neberdine fell under legal standards of care and medical quality for medical and clinical trials and this finally assured me, this would prove to be my eventual undoing when I would be trapped in a McMurphy with only five seconds to go till doomsday for myself and for the other subjects at the drug trial where the central cortex of the G.R.T.A supercomputer 6000 would meltdown and all of the data and our consciousnesses would be lost along with Gertie forever because of Gertie's recklessness.   
I signed and initialed and signed and finger printed all the adjacent forms that applied to what was needed to be signed and I waived so many things including the Right to Life in case if anything went wrong and I went brain dead, I also had to waive away any responsibility to Neberdine or anybody to Neberdine or any of its affiliates if I survived and I ended up sick, injured, paralyzed, had a traumatic brain injury and so on, you may think this sounds insane, but maybe you should fuckin reread the field trip forms that you oh-so happily brain dead sign for your kids, I can guarantee they have the same fancy legal terms, but because its so goddamn archaic, your brain has given up understanding that you just sign away anyway. But I am fucking digressing from my story...fun times.  
A man sitting next to me in a bright, neon orange plastic chair in his mid fifties leans over and points out the bombs on my form and says   
"You see the bombs? That's where the money comes from. I heard they having some issues with the drug in the last phase and they still are trying to test phase it ahead of schedule so they can release it ahead of schedule, they really wanna get their money's worth from this. I heard this is some strong shit."  
Detective Brian Cassidy of the Brooklyn SVU looks a bit aghast at the idea of such dangers and bitterly snorts  
"Then why fucking continue try and test this shit, knowing it ain't gonna go well? They are the literal definition of insanity."  
He threw a confused face and shrugged before leaning back in his chair before the intercom called out   
"Brian Cassidy to Testing Room Six for U.L.P Phase III trial intake exam"  
And right afterwards, as if coincidences didn't yet exist  
"Peter Stone to Testing Room Nine for U.L.P Phase III trial intake exam"  
I enter the room and sit down, the Asian woman in front of me is stone faced and expressionless, like she's done this a million times before and could crack me with that sort of piercing stare, her wells of eyes are filled with a sort stoniness, like she could swallow me whole for breakfast and wouldn't have a slightest second of remorse while doing so. She begins typing on a keyboard rapidly which echoes throughout the whole room, if this is their way of intimidating the subject, well done Neberdine, well played. She bows before me in a gesture of respect, as if I am an opponent that she must slice down, and then a assistant proceeds to strap a blood pressure cuff to my left arm and a pulse ox clip to my right pointy finger and a pulse ox clip on my left pointy finger, soon a galvanic skin response device is strapped to my chest and I can feel my heart rate spike already because of the sight of so many wires, this is a sight that, I'm generally not accustomed to at all. The machine in front of me measures my vitals while questions are being asked to me, as the pictures are being shown to me.  
My anxiety is spiking further, knowing that this is it, that any wrong answer can end my chances at Neberdine forever . I can hear the clicking and the whirring of the white machine before me as its needles move up and down in a rhythmic pattern like an EEG monitor as the picture shows a photograph of a hawk and I eagerly answer  
"Freedom"  
And she quickly takes note before the picture changes to a picture of a pill of bottles and I say   
"Controlled"  
Another picture, this time of a family comes, it reminds me of something I lost, something I can't have, no matter what God I pray to. I reply flatly after a moment of hesitation  
"Isolated."  
Then I see an ink blot and I reply  
"Two frogs dancing and pirouetting in midair while they are having tea with the mad hatter"  
The test continues on and when the test nears the end, the woman says "I want you to turn your attention toward me as I ask you this final question." And then I look up into her expressionless eyes and slightly lean forward and It almost reminds me of a police interrogation in a sense because there is a double mirror behind me and I can hear the clicking and whirring from the machine below me, for a long while, there is a moment of tension before I crack and ask   
"Aren't you...Aren't you gonna ask the final question?"  
And in that instant, the green light right adjacent to her head lights up and she says   
"Congratulations, the defense mechanisms are deemed fungible, you have passed the test, you are now in the ULP Phase III Trial"  
And soon I'm handed a #4 plastic ID lanyard, I know I'm actually in the study and I gotta, gotta make this goddamn fucking count.


	5. He swallowed burning coals

Nick Amaro twiddled his thumbs nervously when he was told that the experiment had been apparently struggling with and he was suspicious, but he thought nothing more of it as he had been repeatedly reassured of the safety and the efficacy of the drug and their trial was going well so far. He looked around and entered the line and began the sign in process and signed so many documents, including an NDA and his knuckles and fingers ached so horribly from it all, he then sat down and waited for his name to be called for the intake exam to test his mental state and his defense mechanisms and his willpower and his subconscious.  
He sat in front of the woman and was strapped down with a blood pressure arm cuff and a galvanic skin response device was strapped to his chest, as well as a pulse clip and the white machine in front of him whirred and turned on, to show an image of a bottle of pills and Nick replied   
"Sedated."  
When the image of a family was shown to him, he coldly replied   
"Suppressed, abused."  
He was then shown an image of a ink blot image and then he replied  
"I see a father watching over his child, protecting it and shielding it from harm...perhaps...pregnant."  
He then saw the image turn on the projector and another image before his very eyes was displayed, he saw the image of a hawk and he eagerly responded  
"Power and conquest."

Soon the woman requested Nick to turn his full attention to her as the machine kept tracking his brain activity as well as his heart rate and blood pressure. Nick had been trained in police tactics in how to interrogate someone, including hardened drug traffickers, human traffickers, he was used to employing the same blank unnerving gaze that she was now trying to use on him and he was not fooled at all, he refused to give in and it soon turned into a silent battle of the wills between the two people and the light beside him lit up in green and the woman then began  
"Congratulations, the defense mechanisms are deemed fungible, you have passed the test, you have been accepted into the ULP Phase III trial."  
He then was taken to the main lobby where he was handed a #6 badge and he bitterly sighed and realized, then, if he could make it through this, would he be the same in terms of personality? Would be still be sane? He was largely fearful and hopeful that the money that they were offering him in exchange for testing the deadly dangerous drug that was deemed as the next big cure for all forms of mental illness and all forms of human suffering, one could not help but wonder if this was all too good to be true or not.  
Nick breathed heavily as the orderlies came through, gathered up all the odd numbered subjects and took them down the elevator first, Nick and Peter were the evens and they would be next to be taken down the elevator.   
The orderly soon came back and lined them up in numerical order, ascending as they went into the tiny elevator and they went to level -77 and the doors swept open and then they were guided down pink lighted narrow corridors that were lined with the blue stripe and it led to a massive pure white commons room where there was twelve chairs surrounding a circular white table which had a bonsai tree growing in it, and across from the table, there were twenty four sleeping pods, hexagonal shaped, lined the wall and the orderlies began inspecting the bags for any sort of contraband, which they didn't find. The orderly began   
"The number of your pod corresponds to the number on your lanyard. That pod will be your home during the duration of your stay here with us. Leaving your pod at any unauthorized moment will result in the termination of your stay here at this trial, as well as bringing shame and humiliation upon you. Once you reach your pod, an orderly will approach and begin to inspect your bag. Once the orderly has inspected your bag, you will put your bag in your locker. Once you have done that, make your way to this gentleman. He will give you your uniform, as well as your patented Neberdine shoes, which you cannot take with you at the end of the trial. Once you have your uniform and shoes, you will make your way to the pods, then you will get in your pods and change clothes in your pods. There will be no changing in the commons. Intimacy is off limits, there will be no cohabitation inside the pods. Once the curfew starts, lights go out. We will tell you when there is mealtime. You get two Etch A Sketches and one Lite-Brites. Please don't fight over them. We will tell you when there is recreation time, and we will tell you when to sleep. Thank You. There is also a little ladder underneath that will help you get into your pod. Also note, from here on in, you will be referred to as the number on your lanyard. You are the Evens. Attention!"  
The two lab coated scientists first bowed to the giant G.R.T.A supercomputer and then to the orderlies and then the orderly continued   
"Please turn your attention to Dr. Muramoto and Dr. Fujita. They will be supervising your trials."  
Dr. Robert bowed again, along with Dr. Fujita to the subjects and addressed them   
"Welcome, subjects. You made the right choice. It's time to start your lives again. You don't fuck this up, I won't fuck this up. Just kidding."   
And Azumi pulled out a cigar and lit it while the subjects gave each other confused and odd looks as Nick knew there was something very, very wrong and it was very much too late to back out of the trial now that he had signed all those dang papers sealing him into an iron clad contract.


End file.
